Pharmaceutical Analysis

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The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a new guidance document, Analytical Procedures and Method Validation for Drugs and Biologics. The guidance is quite general in nature. Anyone hoping for specific recommendations on topics such as which methods to use will be disappointed. Industry experts say that i really isn’t feasible for the FDA to provide detailed recommendations about analytical methods for biopharmaceuticals, however.

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LCGC North America

This installment provides an overview of high-throughput characterization techniques of drug leads to support small molecule drug discovery programs in a pharmaceutical company. A myriad of analytical chemistry techniques including separation science methodologies are used to confirm the structures and identities, quantitating the concentrations of stock solutions, and measuring key physicochemical properties of the new chemical entities (NCE). A case study is used here to illustrate the details of these applications in high-throughput characterization.

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LCGC North America

Here in part II of our series on assessing protein aggregation, we provide an overview of best practices for achieving this goal, including the importance of using a multimethod approach.Here in part II of our series on assessing protein aggregation, we provide an overview of best practices for achieving this goal, including the importance of using a multimethod approach.

The Column

Benedetto Natalini of the University of Perugia, Italy, spoke to Bethany Degg of The Column about the driving forces in pharmaceutical analysis, including the importance of regulation, chirality, and miniaturization.

Special Issues

During the past year, LCGC examined current trends in the application of liquid chromatography (LC), and gas chromatography (GC), and related techniques in environmental, food, forensics, and pharmaceutical analysis. This article presents some developments made by separation scientists working in these application areas and offers insights into the current trends in each field.

E-Separation Solutions

LCGC recently spoke with Pauline Rudd of University College, Dublin, and The National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) in Dublin, Ireland, about her work using ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) for the characterization of protein glycosylation.

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Special Issues

The determination of genotoxic impurities (GIs) in drug substances and pharmaceutical products is an emerging topic in pharmaceutical quality control. GIs are intermediates or reactants in the synthetic pathway of a drug substance and should be monitored at ppm (?g/g drug substance) or even ppb (ng/g) levels. This is several orders of magnitude lower than in classical impurity analysis (0.05% or 500 ppm level) or in residual solvent analysis. Analytical methods for the determination of GIs include gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC), both often combined with mass spectrometry (MS) detection. Some typical examples of GIs trace analysis using GC and LC are presented. The potential of on-line reaction monitoring is also discussed.